


He Wasn't Coming Back

by ProblematicPines



Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon & Comics)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Mental Anguish, Night Terrors, Nightmares, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-25
Updated: 2019-01-25
Packaged: 2019-10-16 05:59:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17544044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProblematicPines/pseuds/ProblematicPines
Summary: It had unfortunately become a common occurrence for Greg to awaken screaming at night, and for Wirt to comfort and console him.





	He Wasn't Coming Back

It had unfortunately become a common occurrence for Greg to awaken screaming at night, and for Wirt to comfort and console him.  
Ever since they had returned home from The Unknown, the boys had depended on one another much more than they had beforehand. Before tumbling down that slope into the freezing black water that threatened to take their lives, Wirt had always saw his chipper, chubby-cheeked younger half-brother as a nuisance, and did his best to keep him out of his way by any means necessary. In Wirt’s eyes, the less he saw of his stepfather’s son, the better. He didn’t need the confusing addition to his previously-peaceful life.

Of course, almost losing said half-brother in The Unknown, who willingly sacrificed himself to a child-murdering entity that stalked the woods for his ungrateful older brother’s sake, was a reality check that Wirt had seriously needed.  
From that point on, Wirt had newfound love for his half-brother, who only wanted what was best for him and he had been too much of a stubborn smartass to realize.

It had almost taken Greg’s death for Greg to even see the error of his ways.

But they had left that chapter behind, and they were ready to begin a new one in their lives. At least, that’s what Wirt had thought.  
He had been deluding himself into believing that everything would just go back to normal now that they were beyond the clutches of The Beast and beyond the twisting black branches of his Edlewood Forest.

Of course it wouldn’t. Of course they couldn’t just go to being brothers looking out for one another in a world they previously thought was small and uninteresting (at least in Wirt’s case).   
Of course.  
That would have been too easy, too little of a reminder of what Wirt nearly lost, what he nearly gave up for his own despair.

And so, almost every night since they had returned home, Wirt would run from his bedroom down the hall to Greg’s room, where he would find his beloved brother screaming in his bed, having suffered yet another nightmare as a result of the trauma he went through in The Unknown.  
Wirt would hold Greg in his arms as he shivered and whimpered, too terrified to go back to sleep.

Wirt knew that no matter how much he tried comforting him, no matter how many times he tried to tell Greg that he was safe and that The Beast wasn’t coming back for him, that The Beast wasn’t going to try and imprison him a freezing prison of Edlewood and choking black oil, that Greg would only have another nightmare the following night.  
They may have left The Unknown behind in that dark and unforgiving place, but The Beast had left his mark on his brother, and it wasn’t going to recede any time soon.

And it wasn’t like Wirt’s time was all sunshine and daisies.  
He saw The Beast everywhere he went, even when he knew that The Beast was dead and that he wasn’t coming for him or Greg.

He wasn’t coming back he wasn’t coming back he wasn’t coming back he wasn’t coming back he wasn’t coming back he wasn’t coming back he wasn’t coming back he wasn’t coming back he wasn’t coming back he wasn’t coming back he wasn’t coming back he wasn’t coming back

And yet, Wirt saw the shadow everywhere. The huge shadow that stretched impossibly along his bedroom wall, with its blacker-than-black complexion and twisting, jagged antlers and creeping, gnarled fingers that reached for him whenever he tried to sleep, that threatened to curl around his ankle and haul him out of bed and back into that place, where he would be trapped inside a tree trunk until the day he died.  
Until he suffered the fate that so many innocent children had already suffered before him.

Wirt couldn’t very well tell anybody about these shadows; Greg would be scared to death and his parents would almost certainly have him committed.  
So he was condemned to biting his lip and riding out the terror and the sickening sense of dread that always accompanied the approaching dusk, unable to prevent the passage of time and the inevitability of having to sleep in that bedroom, where The Beast could claim him as his own.

He wasn’t coming back he wasn’t coming back he wasn’t coming back he wasn’t coming back

Was he?

**Author's Note:**

> So I recently rewatched "Over The Garden Wall" as part of my annual Autumn tradition and was inspired to write a small Fic on what I think happened after the events of The Unknown. I know that there are official comics that state what happened, but I'm all for canon deviations and such.  
> This Fic was a little more on the angst side of things, as I think the boys would have certainly suffered some kind of trauma after enduring such a terrifying ordeal at such a young age (yes, Wirt is in high school but no high schooler has to be faced with a child-killing monster from another dimension).
> 
> Hopefully any other Fics that I write in this fandom will be more on the light-hearted side.
> 
> As always, comments and kudos are very much appreciated!


End file.
